Photography: Save the Children: GAVI Alliance: 10_IMG_7754Aweb

Mother Lowii Napeyok receives the Tetanus vaccine from Save the Children EPI Community Health Worker Pio Lomone, in Paringa. In some parts of the country, people call tetanus the “black bird.” So many children were dying of tetanus in one area that they even had a special cemetery. They believe that if a baby dies of neonatal tetanus, there must have been a black crow sitting atop their tukul (mud and straw hut) at the time of delivery. After the vaccinators came, communities said that the black bird flew away.